Meandering thoughts of the Knight household, mostly work and technology related guff.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Small Business Server 2003 - The Dreaded 5 CAL Reset Issue

A runaway process on SBS2003 decided to fill up all the disk space on C: in the early hours of the morning. The fallout from this was the System log was corrupt and the SBS license data was reset to the default 5 CALs.The System log was easy to fix - reboot the server.The SBS license data was an absolute pain. I'd never run the "Back up licenses" utility in the Licensing section of Server Management. Microsoft have KB article 888818 discussing this, which is either re-enter the licenses, restore the C:\WINDOWS folder or restore a backup of the licenses.The first wasn't an option as I was offsite and the person with the key to the safe wasn't in. The second was just not viable - why Microsoft couldn't specify which file/folder needed restoring I don't know. The third would have been OK if ever I had run it.After much stuffing about I found that the SBS2003 licenses are kept in the licstr.cpa file in the WINDOWS\system32 folder. Thankfully, Microsoft actually keep an automatic backup of this in autolicstr.cpa. The simple process was to stop the License Logging Service, rename licstr.cpa to licstr.cpa.old, then copy autolicstr.cpa to licstr.cpa. After this I started License Logging Service and used Server Management to confirm that the licenses had been restored.

235 comments:

I just want to thanks you for posting this little blurb. I thought I was going mad. Everything I had found prior to your blog was all a bunch a [insert your favorite 4 letter word here]. One article had me disabling the License Logging service and that seemed to fix most of my problems, well at least for a couple of hours until it woul miraculaously restart itself and change it startup to Automatic. Anyway, I jsut want to say thank you posting this.

Thanks yoooooooooooooooooooou so much dude just help me reslove a problem which i was runing all aorund to fix tried getting help from the reseller no luck and even microsoft...i wasted 4 days and after reading this blog i fix in it 3 minutes. nic blog thanks again.have a nice day

After spending hours looking for a solution, I am forever grateful for your quick and easy solution. Why this isn't posted anywhere on a Microsoft-sponsored website is a joke. Spent hours looking for an actual solution. Yours took no time.Thanks and Happy New Year!

this was the best advice, i have ever received on this issue, I spent all morning trying to figure out my problem, was almost in a panic mode... my outside support couldn't even figure this one out, worked on the servers for years... i will definetely add you to my favorites...

Quality! I just did a Google to see how much licenses were, and I found this article. It's an exact match of what happened to my clients SBS 2003 server....disk space full. Thanks a lot chap. You've made a lot of people very happy I see :-)

I'll add another "Thank You!" to the pile! I'd had this issue before and been able to find the codes to re-assign them, however, todayy, another client had the same issuee, but could not find the license codes! I kept finding the same things (restore the whole Windows folder) that didn't help much. There's even a worse one at MS that just says "select the files or folders that you want to restore"! Even LESS helpful than restoring the whole Windows folder! Anyway, thanks again for both finding and posting this! Saved me what could have been a lot of hassle today!

Thanks for the info...made getting it sorted very quick.Just out of interest what was the runaway process?...mine was exmerge...created a 37GB file...and would have kept going if it could!!!have yet to allow THAT to run again!

logs showed that the exchange online database management was running a defrag that went on for 4-5 hours. That clashed with a scheduled exmerge! Needless to say have since adjusted the management timings which were neglected when I took over the system admin! :-( rgds Clifft

Brilliant! I was panicking, looking through boxes of receipts in the hope that the previous system admin had kept some details about the suddenly missing backups. As everyone else mentioned, the Microsoft article is ridiculously inadequate!

Thanks, we were talking to M$ about buying new licenses when I stumbled over this page. You have saved us a lot of money and frestration. Its amazing that the people at M$ cant give us a solution about a problem like this.

@ft - you can empty out C:\WINDOWS\Temp - it's generally full of old temp files. If you've installed any applications on the server, then look through and empty C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Temp. Also make sure Internet Explorer is set to empty Temporary Internet Files on exit.You can also look in C:\WINDOWS\System32\LogFiles and clean out the W3SVC* folders.Finally, you can stop Automatic Updates and BITS and clear out the C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution folder as this gets quite large over time with updates that have been downloaded and installed.

Chris, you have been a huge help thanks alot. The license issue rearose this morning, and I did your fix again. I had the C: holding steady at 2Gb's but it dipped below 1Gb and lost the Licenses again. Do you know of any thing else I can get rid of on the C:// It has 25GB's of space, I can't find what is taking up that much room. I am never in Internet Explorer on the server so I don't think it is files or logs from that. What else could it be? Thanks man

Thanks you have been a huge help. The license issue happened again this morning.

Anything else I can clean off the C:// it was holding at 2Gb's of free space, but its back down to less then 1 now. I did everythign you told me to clear and gained minimal space. Not sure what could be taken up 24GB's of space on this machine.

@ft - if you're running WSUS on the server and it's using C: for the database and updates then you'll want to regularly run the Server Cleanup Wizard to remove unneeded updates. Another possible cause is if you're running SharePoint the Admin database is configured by default to use Full recovery mode which results in the logfile growing to ridiculously large sizes. You can change the recovery mode to Simple, perform a full backup of the database and shrink the database files to reduce the logfile size.I'd also recommend running something like JDiskReport to get a breakdown of where your disk space is being consumed, thereby helping you work out where the problem is.

WOW..thank you! A few weeks back the space on our C: drive ran out due to a runaway indexing service, fixed it but didn't realize our added SBS licenses magically disappeared with that mess. Fixed now thanks to your post :)

Didnt know what had happened to new clients location. They claimed everything was working fine and they had legit cals. 2003 sbs server only showing 5... wasted 2 days looking for an answer, ro away to turn that F-ing license service off. I still dont even know how I found this post, but I am so glad I did. Thanks for putting it out here, even if it was 2 years ago.

Fortunately this was one of the first articles I came across, so within 10 mins of seeing server issue, moving the Pagefile to another volume, and reading this, it was fixed before they could find the CAL's!

You've just saved my bacon. Microsoft are a joke for not making this more simple. Why on earth is there not an option on the Licensing control panel for 'revert to automatic license backup' or similar!

Can't tell you how much this helped! Exact situation happened to one of our clients, and after dealing with MS for days (and they said there was no auto backup of the file) I stumbled upon your article which was great! Thank you again!

this was the best advice, i have ever received on this issue, I spent all morning trying to figure out my problem, was almost in a panic mode... my outside support couldn't even figure this one out, worked on the servers for years... i will definetely add you to my favorites...

I will add my words of thanks to your post. We too had spent two days calling Microsoft and the original server vendor to recover the original CALs. That this little bit of information is not included in the Microsoft support article is astounding. They could save their customers so much time and frustration and I guess they simply choose not too. Thank God for you, sir.

My situation was little different and your solution helped me to fix my problem. I lost my CALS in SBS 2003 after a memory upgrade. Although I had a CAL backup, 2 different ones actually non of them worked, i got an error stating "Due to significant changes in hardware configuration, the license store you have chosen to restore from is no longer valid" googled it and actually I followed a post, hit a money making website (some experts blah blah site), which didn't wanna join! Anyway, I'm sure others will read this following what I followed. here is what I had to do to restore CALS. I did renamed the file autobackup file to regular backup file as explained in original post and printed the installation codes appeared for few minutes, then I clicked "transfer licenses" I re-entered the installation codes, (make sure to hit printscreen or print them when it shows) then the screen will bring up and activation window, and bunch of activation numbers and phone number to call. I talked to someone very friendly, and he activated my CALS in matter of minutes. then immediately made a backup and life was good. thanks to original poster. God bless you.

Hello , It's amazing solution. I have one query if you can help me. Can I replace the licstr.cpa file from another server. As I have OEM and some issue with my server, so I installed the licenses on another testserver and want to transfer on main server, Please help

Hello,Thanks for your solution. Have a small question. Can i replace the licstr.cpa file from another server. I have a issue with my main server so installed the licenses on testserver, can i replace just the file.

@dangergoogly licstr.cpa is tied to the hardware configuration, so you can't directly use the file. You may be able to perform @gazelle's workaround to print out the license codes and/or transfer the licenses however.

I guess the problem with my server is improper installation. Is it possible to continue setup , will be keep the existing settings like AD. COz any Cal key i use it shows invalid, where as the same OS accepts them on testserver.

I can't thank you enough for posting this wonderful nugget of information which is sadly lacking from the official Microsoft KBs and Docs. This problem occurred on my PDC/SBS box over the holiday weekend and led to several frantic calls and a stressed rush back to the office. Your simple explanation and solution worked like a charm and avoided a time-consuming reboot during crunch time.Thanks again for documenting your suffering and solution, you've saved the rest of us countless time and stress.

I believe this worked for me. However, when I go to Admin Tools/Licensing it says page could not be displayed and still doesn't show any of my licenses... Any idea how i can get the last part fixed to actually view my CALS? Thank you sooooo soo much for the fix!!!

I did restart the licensing service, and the users have reported no more license issues. What is the default web site? How do i get it running again? Is this the internal company website or something else? I couldn't find anyway to set it...

There's no in-place upgrade option - you need to migrate to another server/VM.If you follow the Microsoft migration process or perform a Swing migration, then your AD is kept intact - no need to start from scratch.Note that you need 8GB RAM and a 64-bit capable system to install SBS 2011. Your current server might not meet these specs.

Unfortunatly this didn't help my situation. I looked in licensing and saw no additional license installed, so I tested by installing 5 licenses from another server - which worked. Then I realized I wanted to restore all of the licenses that were previously installed. Neither the file in the sys32 directory or a file from the backup the night before fixed the problem, I had to find old CALs to replace the ones lost because of course the client doesn't have them anymore. I don't know if I would have tried this first (before installing another cal) if it would have fixed the problem - but thanks for sharing regardless!

I know you posted this like 5 years ago or something, but ya know you're still helping people by sharing!I became a victim of this over the weekend when due to some kind of minor DOS attack the log files on IIS went from around 9MB each to 400MB each. The remaining 6GB of space on the disk soon got swallowed up and I was in the sh*t come Friday night till Saturday morning, even then I only got it hobbling back into life.I also destroyed most of my sleeping pattern last night (Sunday to Monday) trying to resolve this.The clue came when people were having problems accessing regular stuff like files and printers.It looked like an issue to do with IIS / Exchange as it manifested in HTTP 500 errors when trying to access Outlook remotely. Hardly any clues.You're a saint among thieves and if I can ever do you a return favor you only need ask!Thank you

I can only reitterate the comments of all those that have posted before me. A brilliant life saving post. It has probably secured an extension to a support contract where a client has had an IT agency looking at this for two weeks and they couldnt resolve it. It was explained to me yesterday and i found your article within minutes. It worked fantastically well and having spent five minutes remotely logged into the server today all is now well. Many thanks again..

Chris, Here it is April 4, 2012 and your 2007 post is still generating "Thank You" from around the world, Texas here. I wonder if any of your other blogs have lived so long. Thank you, saved my tail too.

Hi I just converter my sbs 2003 sp2 server to esxi 5.0 . Everything are working perfectly except the licenses. On the physical machine we had 25 user licenses (5 + 20 add-ons) and unfortunately the 20 extra licenses were not transferred correctly. We tried to restore or add new licenses (on the virtual machine) through the server management without success. It’s giving me an error and open window for debugging.

I tried your way but is still not working

Do you have any idea how to add or restore licenses without the server management tool ?

@Peter further up the comment list @gazelle had a method that allowed them to access the licenses for transfer. Unfortunately licstr.cpa is tied to the hardware configuration, which is why it has broken post-migration.An alternative if you cannot find your original 20-User license key is to use the key provided in the SBS 2011 Licensing FAQ as a temporary measure.

Hello Chris and thanks for your quick reply, I have just solved the problem. The problem was caused during conversion of the physical machine to virtual. Unfortunately all the executables of the server management license tool inside the virtual machine were corrupted so I just copied the ones from the physical server and replace the faulty ones.

Now the license tools are working properly and I can add backup transfer licenses without any problem.

Add me to the list....started having numerous complaints about OWA access. Did all the IIS restarts and server reboots for temporary fixes before finding this article. Everything working great once more.

This service has always caused more problems than it is worth. Microsoft even disables it on some installs. Suspend the SBCore service (with process explorer), this service is what keeps restarting the Licensing Service. Then disable it. Then kill it from process explorer. Now stop and disable the licensing service. It shouldn't restart. Keep your CALs in your safe in case you need them to prove you have licensing. Done.

Thank you Knight. I agree with all the others before me... you saved me a ton of time dealing with this issue! My client called in a panic and I resorted to my friend google and your link was in the top 10. It amazes me that an issue as long standing as this has still not made it to a MS KB article. Keep up the great work! We all appreciate you!

@anonymous the one scenario I can think off the top of my head is significant hardware change (e.g. major virtual machine configuration change, or universal restore to different server hardware). There's sure to be more - the nature of proprietary code with opaque technical details means it's difficult to document all likely scenarios.

Just in case somebody searches on these key words.No license was available for user domain\user using product FilePrint . Use Licensing from the Administrative Tools folder to ensure that you have sufficient licenses.

Funny. here it is 2013 and this still an issue. thanks microsoft. This works perfect! I did have a backup and it would work but this did. This was disk space issue for me as well due to attach caused w3svc logs to spiral out of control.